The Chuck Berry Collectors Blog

So here's for our question of the week:

What was the very first 33rpm LP album containing Chuck Berry?

Now write down your answer, then scroll down ...















If your answer was "After School Session", you know your Berry quite well. Indeed, this album from May 1957 was the very first 33rpm LP containing just Chuck Berry recordings. Released by CHESS under the catalog number LP-1426 this album contains most of Berry's first seven CHESS singles (except four tracks) plus two previously unissued instrumentals.



However, this was not the first 33rpm LP album containing Chuck Berry.

If your answer was the CHESS sampler "Rock Rock Rock", you know your Berry very well. Yes, as the number LP-1425 indicates, this album was released before LP-1426 "After School Session" und it was the very first 12" LP album published under the CHESS label name.
In case you wonder why the first CHESS album was already numbered at 1425, you'll find the answer in Nadine Cohodas's great book "Spinning Blues into Gold": The Chess brothers' first home in the U.S. after immigrating from Poland was at 1425 South Karlov Avenue, Chicago. The number 1425 was also used for the first 45rpm single issued under the CHESS label name: Bless You b/w My foolish heart by the Gene Ammons Sextet in June 1950.
"Rock Rock Rock" is the title of a music film starring Alan Freed. The film was released December 7th, 1956 to the movie theaters in the U.S. (though some sources say December, 5th). On the very first days, Alan Freed, Chuck Berry, and Connie Francis were on stage in a couple of New York theaters for a few minutes each to promote the film. Record labels such as CHESS, whose artists performed in the film, were allowed to promote their records at the cinemas showing the movie. CHESS took this opportunity to concurrently (i.e. December 1957) create an album of same title which looks like a soundtrack album but instead contained only those artists under contract by CHESS: the Moonglows, the Flamingoes, and Berry.
CHESS LP-1425 contains the four songs performed by CHESS artists in the movie:

• "I Knew From The Start" - The Moonglows
• "Would I Be Crying" - The Flamingos
• "You Can't Catch Me" - Chuck Berry
• "Over And Over Again" - The Moonglows

The remaining album is filled with previous hits by the same artists:

• "Maybellene" - Chuck Berry
• "Sincerely" - The Moonglows
• "Thirty Days" - Chuck Berry
• "The Vow" - The Flamingos
• "Roll Over Beethoven" - Chuck Berry
• "I'll Be Home" - The Flamingos
• "See Saw" - The Moonglows
• "A Kiss From Your Lips" - The Flamingos

However, this was not the first 33rpm LP album containing Chuck Berry.

The very first Chuck Berry album has no title and no catalog number. All it says is "These are the new record hits from the motion picture Rock, Rock, Rock". And here's its story:

The movie "Rock, Rock, Rock" was a project by well-known New York disk jockey Alan Freed. And he wanted to get as much money from it as he could. First he owned 10 per cent of the film outright. Second he played a leading role. And third he planned to cash on the music presented therein. So Freed talked the executives of the six record companies whose artists perform their songs in the movie to pass over the publishing rights for the songs to his own Snappner Music Inc. company. He succeeded with 15 of the 20 songs.
Next, in return for allowing the record companies to display their disks in all theaters where the film plays, Freed got himself permission to use the songs on a DJ long-playing album. This was a brand-new idea! There was a growing market for 12" albums, so-called "packaged records", but only in the areas of classical music, Broadway shows, or jazz. There was no LP album from CHESS or any other rock-related company.
Freed sampled the 20 songs onto a single 33rmp record and had the film producing company DCA send this "Disc Jockey Sample - Not For Sale" LP out to more than 600 disk jockeys around the country. Here's a quote from DCA's marketing material:

Something completely new by way of exploitation is being tried on ROCK, ROCK, ROCK; an L.P. record containing all twenty-one songs from the picture has been pressed.
This record is going to every disc-jockey in the country with a letter asking him to set aside one evening in which to play the complete musical score from the picture. We further suggest that you contact your local disc-jockey and have him send out a press release stating that a premiere on disc will take place and have him mention the time and place.

We don't know how many DJs followed this advice. Alan Freed himself "world-premiered" this compilation on October 20th, 1956 on WINS. So it's safe to assume that the album was sent out by the end of October or early November 1956.
Even though more than 600 copies of this very first Chuck Berry album have been pressed and distributed, very few seem to have survived. Most recipients probably either threw it away or played it to death.
The original album is extremely rare. Even the most detailed discography of Berry, Morten Reff's "The Chuck Berry International Directory" fails to show an image as does all of the Internet.
So here, for the first time on the net, images of cover and label of Chuck Berry's very first 33rpm LP album:



As you can see, there is an image of Berry as well as the line "SEE the inimitable Chuck Berry - HEAR him sing You Can't Catch Me". There is no back cover. That side is blank. There is no label nor any kind of catalog number. My best guess for a label name is the film company DCA. Morten Reff lists it under Roost, because the name of that record company is etched into the wax, as you can see on the high-resolution images. My guess is that Roost produced the album for DCA.

And there's even more: It seems that DCA included an 8 page, double letter-sized booklet with the promotional album. At least the copy I was lucky to get had this insert. The complete contents of this booklet is available as a PDF file here: http://www.alanfreed.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/063-King-Of-RockRoll-1956.pdf [If this link doesn't work, try http://www.alanfreed.com/wp/archives/archives-rocknroll-1951-1959/mp-rock-rock-rock/]. What the PDF misses is the original color of the title page as shown here:



If you want to know more about Freed and DCA marketing the movie, check out the other documents at alanfreed.com: http://www.alanfreed.com/wp/archives/archives-rocknroll-1951-1959/mp-rock-rock-rock/

The complete contents of this DJ sampler is as follows - with original label, composer, and publisher according to the film's music cue sheet. Some spellings differ from the album labels. Interestingly there are only 20 songs while the cover talks about 21.

• "Tra La La" - La Vern Baker (Atlantic Records, Johnny Parker, Snapper)
• "Ever Since I Can Remember" - Cirino and The Bowties (Roost Records, Ben Weisman and Aaron Schroeder, Tarpon)
• "The Big Beat" - Jimmy Cavallo's House Rockers (Coral Records, Glen Moore and Buddy Dufault, Snapper)
• "Over and Over Again" - The Moonglows (Chess Records, Ben Weisman and Al Weisman, Snapper)
• "Right Now, Right Now" - Alan Freed's Rock 'n Roll Band (Coral Records, Al Sears and Charles E. Calhoun, Sylvia & Bonita)
• "Thanks to You" - Teddy Randazzo & The Three Chuckles (Vik Records, Glen Moore, Snapper)
• "Baby, Baby" - Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers (Gee Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "Lonesome Train" - Johnny Burnette Trio (Coral Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "We're Going to Rock Tonight" - The Three Chuckles (Vik Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "I Never Had A Sweetheart" - Connie Francis (MGM Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "You Can't Catch Me" - Chuck Berry (Chess Records, Chuck Berry, Snapper)
• "Little Blue Wren" - Connie Francis (MGM Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "Rock, Rock, Rock" - Jimmy Cavallo's House Rockers (Coral Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "The Things Your Heart Needs" - Teddy Randazzo (Vik Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "Rock, Pretty Baby" - 6-year old Ivy Schulman (Roost Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "Would I Be Crying" - The Flamingos (Checker Records, Glen Moore, Snapper)
• "Rock'n Roll Boogie" - Alan Freed's Rock 'n Roll Band (Coral Records, Freddie Mitchell and Leroy Kirkland, Sylvia & Bonita)
• "Won't You Give Me A Chance" - The Three Chuckles (Vik Records, Glen Moore, Snapper)
• "I Knew From The Start" - The Moonglows (Chess Records, Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky, Snapper)
• "I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent" - Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers (Gee Records, George Goldner, Kahl & Adt.)

In addition to the name Snapper all over the track listing, you may also wonder about Glen Moore and Milton Subotsky. While Moore seems to be a composer indeed as his name is also credited in solo e.g. on the Flamingos "Would I be Crying", Subotsky was one of the two producers of this film and also wrote the screen play. Since he never again appeared as a songwriter, my guess is that there was another deal behind the scenes. Just like Freed receiving the publishing rights and license fees, Subotsky got his share from the songwriter fees.

On a final note, there is a 1980s bootleg copy of this album on the Reel'n'Rock label (JN 5703) from Australia.



In contrast to the original album, the bootleg comes in a gatefold cover. It has a back cover with liner notes and a track listing, both of which are missing on Chuck Berry's very first LP album.

[Edit 17-07-2018: Links to alanfreed.com updated]

[Updated, now with prices and images!]
Bear Family, the famous German record company, informs me - and you - about their newest Chuck Berry product:


Rock And Roll Music - Any Old Way You Choose It - The COMPLETE Studio Recordings ... Plus!

To be issued in a few weeks, this new Berry box contains sixteen CDs plus almost four hundred printed pages.
As we know it from Bear Family, this is to be the definitive Berry collection. There is no better and there never will be.
Here's a first view according to Bear Family's Detlev Hoegen. Be sure I'm going to report details as soon as I have them.

• all the CHESS recordings we know from the three Hip-O-Select boxes - plus those they forgot to include
• all the Mercury recordings we know from the already rare 1980s CDs plus unreleased tracks
• the ATCO studio album and more
• live recordings from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s
• an updated discography by Fred Rothwell
• a biography and other writings from Bruce Pegg, Mike Snow, and Roger Fairhurst
• hundreds of pages with photos by Harry Davis, Chuck's uncle, taken during Berry's early career
• previously unseen photos by Jean-Marie Perrier
• an introduction written by Paul McCartney
• plus plus plus

Thanks to designer Mychael Gerstenberger of Malbuch/Berlin, I can show you early photos of the contents. As with all images on this site, click for a better view.



Bear Family claims that this is everything by Berry you ever wanted to have - and for most collectors they are definitely right. There is some additional studio material and tons of live recordings, but only a completionist like myself will want to have that.

The price for the box will be 299 Euros (appr. $400), thus it's save to say that you better start saving money immediately.
Those who want even more might try to get one of only 88 limited Deluxe Editions of this box. To celebrate Berry's 88th birthday on October 18th, Bear Family packs the contents of the box (16 CDs, 2 hardcover books) into an original-size Gibson ES series guitar case. Price will be 499 Euros (appr. $660).

[This is a minor correction to the October 2011 rewrite of a blog article originally posted on September 7th, 2011. Additional research revealed more facts and corrected some factual errors in the original post.]

In July [2011] I had to correct some common knowledge about Johnny B. Goode. Based on findings by Josep Rulló of Barcelona/Spain we learned that there were some errors with the so-called "complete" release of Berry's 1950s Chess recordings on HIP-O-Select's 4-CD-set Johnny B. Goode (HIP-O-Select B0009473-02).
Josep had another comment:

Sweet Little Sixteen – There's a lot of takes of this song in the Hip-O-Select set, but I think the one first released on the “America's Hottest Wax” LP is not there. I haven't heard that album for ages, but I seem to recall it had a false start (guitar intro only) and a complete take, wherein Chuck mixes the lyrics of the last verse with the lyrics from the first verse, and ends with “back in school again”. This line is not heard on any of the five (well, really four) takes used on the Hip-O CD set.

Josep's email started a long discussion about the various versions of Sweet Little Sixteen which can be found on the 4-CD set. And more importantly with the help of Morten Reff and Fred Rothwell we discussed in detail which versions can NOT be found on the 4-CD set.
The first part of Josep's comment was quite easy to solve. Just like with Johnny B. Goode take 2 the engineers at Universal clipped off the false starts when mastering the 2008 CD set. This happened to both the demo version (track 5 on CD2) and the previously unknown alternate take 11 (track 7 on CD 2). To listen to these false starts (and some studio chatter with the demo) you need to go back to records and CDs published in the 1980s.
The second part of Josep's comment lead into some more detailed discussions about the lyrics Berry sings because musically the multiple takes are very similar. Here's Josep again:

There are several lyrical differences between the available takes, but the most prominent one is in verses 1, 4, 5 and 7. On the master, Chuck sings “Boston, Pittsburgh, PA” in verses 1 and 7, and “Bandstand, Philadelphia, PA” in verses 4 and 5. Taking this as a starting point, you can find several variations. On the demo, take 3 and take 11, he even sings “Bandstand, Pittsburgh, PA” on verse 5, which is wrong not only lyrically, but also geographically !!. Of course, I think Chuck knew the lyrics perfectly, and in most of those takes he was merely trying to get the band together without paying much attention to the words, but this is useful to us today in order to tell one from the other.

By "master" Josep refers to the variant which finally made it to Chess single 1683 released January 1958. Given these lyrical variations one can differentiate between the four variants on the HIP-O-Select box easily:

• CD 2, track 5 - the "demo" version with Lafayette Leake on piano. Berry sings about Boston in verses 1 and 7, and about Bandstand in verses 4 and 5, but has the Bandstand mis-placed to Pittsburgh in verse 5.
• not on the set - the "demo" version complete with false start, studio talk and an extra guitar note at the end. This was first released on the bootleg LP "America's Hottest Wax" (Reelin' 001, 1979). The first legal release was on a German budget album called "The Giant's [sic] of Rock'n Roll" (K-tel TG 1367) in 1982, though less the false start. In full it appeared on Chess CXMP 2011 "Chess Masters" in March 1983 and Chess LP 9190 "More Rock'n'Roll Rarities" in August 1986. Note that for some reason the HIP-O-Select box only tells the original US releases.
• CD 2, track 6 - take 3 of the second recording session, the one which leads to the final recording and has Johnny Johnson on piano. This was unreleased until 2008 when it made it to the HIP-O set. Here Berry sings "Boston" in verses 1, 4, and 7, while the only "Bandstand" in verse 5 is mis-placed to Pittsburgh again. The recording ends with some studio talk.
• CD 2, track 7 - take 11, in which Berry puts "Boston" into verses 1 and 4, while verses 5 and 7 are about "Bandstand". Again Berry places the Bandstand to Pittsburgh during verse 5. This recording ends with someone coughing into the microphone. Again this version was unreleased before it was included into the HIP-O set - even though the box booklet incorrectly claims that this version had appeared as an alternate take on "Rock 'n' Roll Rarities" (Chess LP 92521, March 1986).
• CD 2, track 8 - take 14. Finally Berry gets the lyrics right in the way we know it: "Boston, Pittsburgh PA" in the first and last verse, "Bandstand, Philadelphia PA" in between, that is verses 4 and 5. The take ends with Chuck joking that they finally got it. This version of take 14, though without the final studio talk, was first released on the 6-LP set "The Chess Box" (Chess 80001) in 1988.
• CD 2, track 9 - take 14 again, though without the studio chat and accelerated by five per cent. It is this variant which was finally released as a hit single in 1958.

All of the variants listed above have Berry singing "back in class again" at the end of verse 6. So where is Josep's "back in school again" version?
Indeed there is a recording of Sweet Little Sixteen which is very similar to the final take except for the piano solo and Berry singing "school" instead of "class". This was the next-to-final take 13 of the recording session. Josep found it on Chess RCD034-2 titled "Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll", released in Spain in 1991. The take first surfaced on the two-LP set "Rock 'n' Roll Rarities" (Chess LP 92521) in March 1986, though in edited form.
On that double album there is a so-called unreleased version of Sweet Little Sixteen, which is take 13 preceded by a false start. However that false start does not belong to that take! Those who have access to the session tapes tell that the false start actually opens take 11, while take 13 never had a false start. Thus like we have found out with Johnny B. Goode, we must learn that the CHESS/MCA engineers in 1986 created unreleased versions by clipping and pasting parts from multiple takes into what they found to be a reasonable sequence.
This also explains why the HIP-O set contains take 11 and claims that this was a known take: The engineers at HIP-O found the take with the previously known false start (take 11) and included it in the set, without noticing that the take did not continue as known - and in addition they clipped off the false start, which was the only segment of the take known before.
Thus for now we have to add the following variants to our list:

• not on the set - false start of take 11, originally released as the first part of the so-called unreleased version on "Rock 'n' Roll Rarities" (Chess LP 92521, March 1986).
• not on the set - take 13 in which Berry sings "back in school again" during verse 6, originally released as the second part of that unreleased version. In unmodified form released on "Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll" (Chess RCD034-2, Spain 1991)

This now makes sweet little eight Chess studio recordings and variants of this famous tune. Only five of them are on the HIP-O-select box. So far for "complete" ...

For the sake of completeness I do not want to forget to tell that there is another studio recording of Sweet Little Sixteen made 1966 for Mercury. You can easily distinguish that one from the 1958 versions by the prominent tambourine playing.

I want to end this long post with another comment from Josep:

Man, can you believe the hours we've all spent listening to those takes? It shouldn't be that difficult to sort this out!!! If this isn't love for the music, then I don´t know what it is...